Customer Reviews

Rejoice in the Lord

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Erik Routley was a big name in hymnody during the late-middle 20th century. This hymnal which he edited is pretty good, at first glance. I appreciate his approach to hymn selection. Most of the material is traditional rather than modern. He tried to gather the "best" (and only the best) material available at the time. The hymns are arranged in Biblical order starting with the creation of the world and moving through Old Testament history to the Gospel story and the development of the early church, up to Final Judgment and the promise of an eternal afterlife at the end.

Unfortunately Mr. Routley died while this hymnal was still in production (but apparently after most of the major editorial work was finished.) Probably as a result of this, the Scriptural Index is defective. Though quite comprehensive, it appears to have been made for an earlier manuscript version, and was not checked to make sure it still corresponded to the final published hymnal. Several times I have tried to look up Scriptural references & allusions with this index, only to find the indicated hymns bore absolutely no relevance to the indexed Bible passage. This is useless to me, and is really inexcusable in a book claiming to be "A Hymn Companion to the Scriptures."

So, basically what you've got here is a really good collection of hymns with a disastrously flawed index, making it of little use to a church music director working with the Revised Common Lectionary. However it is a pleasure to browse through, and you may discover valuable material purely by chance. Worth having if you can get it cheap.